


The seconds in ten months

by drarrylicious



Category: StarKid Productions RPF
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Mentions of Sex, Parents, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drarrylicious/pseuds/drarrylicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Prompted) Darren and Lauren got divorced for their own sake, but Lauren doesn't want the kids to feel they hate each other. So she looks at him and asks, do you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The seconds in ten months

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I kinda didn't know how to write this and then ended up being this huge super angsty thing. Maybe it was an excuse for not studying for my finals, idk, but well here it is.  
> I'M SORRY FOR EVERYTHING AND IF YOU READ THANK YOU I LOVE YOU! <3

> _“We weren’t in love, we made love with a detached and critic virtuosism, and then we fell into terrible silence and the foam of our beer glasses seemed to turn into oakum, it got warm and contracted while we looked at each other and sensed that was the time…”_
> 
> -Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch.
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

**The seconds in ten months**

“Temporary armistice, nothing else.” Lauren cleared up again, glancing down at him. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t.”

She unbent straight the shiny plastic star at the top of the giant tree, before climbing down the wood ladder. For some reason, it’d tilt to one side every two hours, and she stubbornly continued to fix it yet once again. Darren held the ladder while she did, but when he tried to hold it to take it back to its place in the garage, she anticipated his movement and snapped quickly:

“Stop. Don’t do that.”

“It’s fine.” He replied, but she was already leaving with the ladder dangerously balancing between her arms; Darren gasped quietly when one of the kids raced past under it. Lauren was strong, but her petite body had a difficulty carrying those kind of things.

It wasn’t the first time that night he could tell she didn’t want him to help her. It bothered him, but he didn’t say a thing.

She was wiping her hands on her jeans when she appeared again. The corner of her lips folded in something like half a grin when she looked at him, and Darren wondered if she forgot how to smile at him and he thought he couldn’t eat a bite of what it smelled like the most delicious Christmas dinner.

“Take care of the twins while I shower, will you?” Lauren asked softly.

“Sure,” Darren replied quickly, “Take the time you need.”

She gave again that smile that wasn’t a smile and Darren thought all of this might had been a terrible idea.

 _“I don’t want them to feel like we hate each other,”_ Lauren had started, quietly, when Darren dropped the two little boys off after a weekend, a month ago.

 _“But it really seems like we do, sometimes.”_ Darren said coldly, and she bit her lip.

 _“Not during Christmas…”_ She added, bitterly, _“We can’t be those kind of people.”_

It was the first time they were spending a soirée together after the divorce, ten months ago. It was risky. They were in that limbo between all the unsaid bad things they agreed to not take against the other anymore, and the melancholy of lonely nights, and memories, and mothers asking _how are you taking it, sweetie?_ and the forced smile in response.

~

 

“You look beautiful,” Darren confessed, admiring her, when she walked down the stairs, wearing a red satin dress he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t know if he could say that, but he just did.

People say thirties are the best decade of your life and they clearly seemed to be for her.

“Thank you,” Lauren whispered, flattered, before turning around, “I’m gonna put the table –oh.” She gasped as soon as she put a step into the kitchen. The table was elegantly served already, there was even a bottle of champagne and one of coke she hadn’t bought, candles lightened and soft suitable themed music sounding distantly.

She was speechless for a few seconds, before one of the twins pulled from her dress and asked her if he could drink the coke.

“Sure, go ahead, love.” Lauren said to the 6 year old. She turned her head back, “Impressive, with this short amount of time.”

“Well, the boys helped.” Darren replied with a casual smirk.

Lauren looked at him in the eyes and said, sourly, something that erased the grin within a second.

“Couldn’t you have done this earlier?”

Ten months earlier, possibly.

He didn’t have an answer for that.

 

~

The third conflict sputtered between them during dinner, that had been overall too good to last. The food was delicious, the twins had eaten even the vegetables and were playing at the back yard. Darren had drank, and Lauren had drank, and she said he could leave when he pleased now that the kids were outside, and he said _okay_ , and he didn’t even know how could that possibly bother her. She pretended to look out for the twins through the window when her voice came out in almost a scream.

“Stop saying yes to everything I say!”

Darren snorted, not knowing whether to be amused or offended, “I thought you wanted an armistice.” He finished the champagne in his glass and placed the cup with a loud clap, “I’m agreeing to everything you say to avoid fights, and you fight with me nevertheless.” He fixed his eyes on hers, and for the first time she held back the look. Her accusation was completely true, but what else did she expect? “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

She stayed in silence for a moment, standing up next to the window, and he knew she was in a fight with herself too. And this time, her voice was low and he could barely hear it.

“Is it so horrible what you want to say to me?”

Darren blinked, shocked. And angry with himself because of the weakness in her voice right then. And angry for being angry about something that was a shared blame.

“No…” He shook his head at the misinterpretation. “Of course not…”

Darren noticed her teary eyes and got more upset –and bitterer –and angrier. He fell into the count that she had been provoking him all night to fight because of that. She wanted to know if the bad things in the scale still weight more than the good ones. And he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hear her crying –maybe then it’d be okay if he cried, too.

But he didn’t.

“I don’t hate you.” He finally let out, “I hate what we did to each other. But not you. Not you, never. I couldn’t…”

Lauren walked to him, slowly. He looked up at her and clearly heard her breathing in and out, before she gently placed a hand on his cheek and _god_ , he couldn’t believe she was touching him like that.

She hadn’t touched him softly, exactly this way (like she always used to do in bed every night, when they were in love), _at all_ since the breakup. In ten months. Three hundred and four days.

And, honestly, he hadn’t done or said one single gentle thing neither ever since.

Her thumb was running softly his cheekbone, and he wanted to close his eyes so he could feel it harder, but he didn’t want to miss the sight of her looking at him that way. She opened her lips in what Darren thought was an eternity, but whatever she was going to say never reached her lips and he always wondered what it was.

The twins entered abruptly, screaming frantically and at the same time _mom, mom_ and something about a phantom they saw outside and how it pushed one of them to the snow and he hurt his knee, and _mom, mom._

Lauren put her hand away in a swift movement she hoped was enough discreet, and her fingers retracted like if she wanted to keep the memory of that touch hidden in the palm of her hand.

Darren saw her gulping heavily, and _mom, mom._

Something seemed to click inside of her as she turned back.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, what?”

 

~

After the knee tragedy, the boys went to sleep. Darren realized this was his sign to leave.

“Let’s at least finish the champagne. I’m not gonna finish it on my own.” Lauren suggested, but her eyes were begging him _–like if she needed to_. Funny how earlier she was implying with a cold voice and a dead that he could leave whenever he wanted to.

He stayed to finish the champagne, talking about the school they had decided to send the twins to, and then the school’s library, in which Lauren’s friend also got a job in, and how that friend was going to get married for the second time, and how marriage can be that simple for other people when they couldn’t move on even after ten months (or three hundred and four days), and they still had to settle an armistice to not end up either throwing things to each other, Lauren crying and saying that she wanted this _ten months ago and not now_ and Darren saying that his _job_ – _your job, your job, you should’ve married your job and not me_ , or fucking hard in what was now Lauren’s room, with the lights off and with Lauren who couldn’t stop whispering every damn ten seconds to keep quiet because the kids were sleeping two rooms away, (And Darren hated it because how could he fuck someone if she doesn’t stop talking about kids, theirs or anyone’s) and it was her the one who panted harder because the sex was rough and heartless, and afterwards Lauren always said something like _I miss making love to you_. And Darren didn’t know what to say because she was right, she was always right and they had fucked but there was something missing and he hoped that she didn’t think he hated her because he fucked her like that; he just didn’t know how to touch her anymore, he still loved her but he felt she was an ice doll, she hurt his hands when he tried to love her and the warmth of his skin made her thaw, escaping from his fingers when he clutched tighter, and he didn’t want to keep holding her stiff and frost body while she disintegrated in his arms.

So he let her free.

But that touch, that touch… He finished his last glass of champagne and hated that he had no serious excuse to stay there anymore.

They had been quiet for twenty minutes after they talked about their marriage and their relationship and their love without screaming at each other, and they had been quiet _because_ they didn’t know what to do because they didn’t scream at each other.

Lauren was mildly dancing in her place, in front of the music stereo, last glass of champagne in hand, half-drunk but it didn’t count because he was half-drunk too. She was beautiful as always, or maybe more because he couldn’t have her, like in college, when he flirted with her implying something about sleeping together and she said _ha-fucking-ha, in your dreams_ , but she laughed and he went to sleep hoping she was right.

 _Blue Christmas_ was playing in the radio and it was so adequate and ironic he could laugh or cry right there. Lauren was singing it quietly.

“Remember our first Christmas together, here?”

She kept singing and dancing but a laugh was tangled between the lyrics. _I'll have a Blue Christmas without you…_

“You were upset because we did our shopping very late and we couldn’t get a tree.”

“What’s Christmas without a tree?” Lauren shook her head, like if it still upset her, and carried on singing and dancing. _So blue just thinking about you…_

“I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to make you happy at all costs, so I woke up at 4 in the morning and decorated the elm outside.”

_You'll be doin' all right…_

“It was perfect. I had no idea you could work that out so brilliantly.”

_But I'll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas…_

 “So it became tradition. Well, until now.”

Lauren stopped. “I hate _this_ tree. The point tilts to the side, and it gets on my nerves.”

Darren giggled.

“God, I miss you.”

He wanted to say _I miss the old you_ , but he knew she was still the same, always right, and perfect, and singing and dancing, and it was all only his fault all only his fault and maybe he had drank too much or had to keep drinking, because he felt he became the vivid personification of an oxymoron of numb pain.

Lauren held his hand and pulled from it. He stood up like if he was her puppet, and she caressed the back of his neck, where the hair starts growing, and just looked at him in the eye for so long and so centered like if she wanted to resolve the enigma in them, and Darren wanted to say _oh honey you don’t wanna go there again_ , but she was touching him like that and he almost felt loved again.

He kissed her and it felt unreal because she wasn’t panting and meeting harshly his lips between hard onslaughts, and she wasn’t saying they had to be quiet because the twins…

Darren wanted to fuck her or make love to her, or anything in between she was willing to. He only knew they were drunk and he missed her and she was touching him like she used to. She accidently(he hoped) dropped her glass and it broke in little pieces when it met the floor, and he was glad that was the most violent thing that had happened in that room, well maybe the second most violent thing because then she asked:

“Do you still love me?”

It should be forbidden to talk when someone is kissing you like you haven’t kissed anyone in ten months, or three hundred and four days. Four hundred thirty-seven thousand seven hundred sixty minutes.

She must’ve known he’d ruin it as soon as he opened his mouth, and she must’ve wanted him to, like she wanted him to fight or to take off her clothes in the past, because she plans everything and knows everything and he shouldn’t have the right to even share the same air as her.

“Did you ever?”

It couldn’t be the other way around, it could never be the other way around.

“How can you say that?” She already sounded like a memory he was recalling, alone on his bed.

And Darren felt her, again, draining from his hands. And he tried to catch her, but it was late, late, late.

Maybe it’s the only way he can focus and keep the count of the seconds he didn’t think he’d need to reckon up.


End file.
